


Chivalric Romance

by Reynier



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Ghosts, M/M, Murder, The quest equivalent of a case fic, uhhhh they kind of suck i just wanna say that like theyre terrible people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reynier/pseuds/Reynier
Summary: They lay in silence, Lancelot staring at the canopy above him and Gawain staring at Lancelot’s face. Both of them had a definite sense that there was a major point they were missing. Lancelot had a vague conception that it might have to do with the fact that he killed too many people. Gawain suspected it was that they had skipped dinner.“Well,” said Gawain eventually, “nothing to be done about it now. Hey, do you think it’s also bad if we touch at all, or is it just kissing?”
Relationships: Gawain/Lancelot du Lac (Arthurian)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	Chivalric Romance

**Author's Note:**

> look idk what to tell you its exactly what it says on the tin

“Well,” said Gawain, slamming the heavy oak door behind him and leaning against it half out of relief and half in case anything tried to force its way through, “that’s one evening survived. Do you see a key anywhere?”

Lancelot shot a quick glance around the room. An old, rickety looking table and two chairs huddled up against one windowless wall, a set of cards spread out. The rest of the cramped room was taken up by a curtained bed, slightly dusty but otherwise serviceable-looking. There was no key. He strode over and grabbed one of the chairs, passing it to Gawain who, keeping one arm braced against the door, slotted the back of the chair under the bar. Then he stepped back and dusted off his hands. “Eh. Should hold.”

“I’ll sleep through anything including monsters,” warned Lancelot. He was eyeing the card spread curiously. 

Gawain, sweeping his bedraggled hair out of his eyes with one bruised hand, shrugged. Normally the concept of being woken by a hideous creature would terrify him, but it all seemed eminently manageable if Lancelot was there. “I’ll wake you up. And you can point and laugh as I fall out of bed, or something.”

“Bed,” agreed Lancelot distantly. He was normally very sleep-motivated, but something about the cards had caught his attention. Squinting, he picked one up carefully. It was brittle and yellowed with age. “This has blood on it.”

“Hm?”

“Blood on the cards.” He knelt. “The floor too. There’s so much dust it’s hard to tell, but it’s there.”

Various possibilities presented themselves to Gawain at lightning speed, mainly concerning horrible ideas like ghosts and ghouls and spectres, and were summarily dismissed on the basis that Lancelot would deal with them. “Whatever,” he said, letting his satchel slide to the floor and, stretching, making his way over to the bed. “Weird old blood. We’ll figure it out in the morning. I just want to—”

He pulled aside the curtain, blinked for a second, closed the curtain, and said, “What’s the morality of sleeping on a bed with a bunch of corpses on it?”

“Uhh…” Lancelot dropped the card on the table and sprang across the room with perhaps too much vim and vigour. With the curtain swept aside, it was clear that the blood on the cards had not been a fluke. He pursed his lips and studied the bodies with their dry, mottled parchment-skin and dusty clothes. “Oh. That’s not a bunch. That’s only two.”

“They’re very dead,” said Gawain doubtfully, but he prodded at one with an expression closer to irritated than disgusted. “Is it— it seems rude to just—” He gestured plaintively. 

Lancelot, who was a very rude man if you asked anyone other than his friends, grabbed one end of the stained upper blanket and pulled it towards him. The body nearer him tumbled gracelessly onto its partner, limbs askew like a badly-made puppet. He tossed the top half of the blanket over the pair and hoisted them off the bed, letting them sag to the floor unceremoniously. 

Hovering behind him, Gawain pointed and said, “That one’s arm is still out.”

Neither Lancelot nor Gawain could be entirely certain how much of Gawain’s superstition was genuine, how much was put-on in an attempt to make Lancelot laugh, and how much was put-on because when you had spent your life being as brutally competent as was required, it was nice to feel _in_ competent every so often. It didn’t matter: the plaintive little comments to the effect that ghosts were really rather frightening continued, and Lancelot humoured them as he humoured everything Gawain did. It was only fair turnabout. He knelt by the side of the lumpy blanket roll and grabbed the offending limb by the brittle wrist, intending to shove it out of view. This did not succeed. 

“Ah,” said Lancelot, and gestured at Gawain with the new arm he had acquired, “this is embarrassing. What do I— you know— I’m just going to put it under the bed.”

Gawain considered this. “Out of sight, out of mind!” he decided, and cast a look at the sheets on the bed. They were dusty but otherwise unmarred. “Is this— I mean— are we awful people if we sleep on this bed?”

This was not a question Lancelot was particularly accustomed to asking himself. “Um… I think… as long as we don’t kiss or anything… it’s alright?”

“Really? Just kissing?”

“Or anything,” said Lancelot vaguely. He felt as though there were a key part of the answer he was missing, but couldn’t quite put his finger on it. The most important factor in this situation was sleep, which he was highly motivated to do, and corpse ethics were secondary. 

After a second’s introspection, Gawain shrugged. “Sounds good. Help me up?”

Lancelot snorted and held out his hands. “Of course. One— two— three—”

It wasn’t the most dignified way to get onto a bed, but it was better than clambering onto a chair, and Gawain counted his blessings. Yanking his gloves off and casting them towards the card table, he moved over to make room for Lancelot, who joined him with much less drama. “Cheers,” Gawain said, lifting one hand in a mock-salute, “we’ve made it to bed time.”

Lancelot sagged back against the old pillow at the head of the bed, sighing. Something about the odd little room was catching at his mind, but he couldn’t figure out what. He twisted his mouth and cast a glance over to Gawain, who was staring at him with a content expression. “Does something seem… off… to you?”

“Hm?”

“About this room. And the bodies. And all the blood.”

“Oh.” Gawain reflected on this. It was, he had to admit, not a natural state for a bedroom. “I guess someone must have killed them.”

“Right…” The card table leered at him, hauntingly familiar. “Gawain, have we been here before?”

Gawain squirmed and flipped onto his side, the better to stare at him quizzically. “What?”

“Maybe… a couple decades ago.” The words didn’t make any sense. Lancelot was thirty years old. Roughly. He thought. 

“What?” said Gawain again, but this time with an edge of caution. He didn’t like thinking about time. It passed, and that was the only point, right? It didn’t feel like it would ever pass enough to end him. He hoped it wouldn’t. 

But, like a dog with a bone, Lancelot continued. “The cards. I just— I feel like I’ve been here before. This room specifically. With the cards.”

“Well, I mean, _someone_ must have killed them,” joked Gawain, relieved now that the conversation had moved on from the frightening notion of time. Then he frowned. “Oh! Joking aside, I think we killed them, Lancelot!”

“Yes…” said Lancelot, feeling inexplicably embarrassed. “I would agree. Oh, gosh. Should we get off of their bed?”

“It’s comfortable…”

They stared at each other guiltily. “What would Guinevere say?” asked Lancelot. 

“That we were terrible people and shouldn’t be trying to sleep here in the first place.”

Lancelot gazed at him for a second. “Wow, she is a lot harsher on you than on me. Alright, a different one. What would Yvain say if you asked him?”

“Um,” said Gawain, “I wouldn’t. But if I did, he would sigh and act really disappointed and tell me I had acted dishonourably but he couldn’t blame me because of something something. I mean, it’s not my fault. Right?”

“No, no,” said Lancelot modestly, “of course not. We couldn’t have known we’d been here before.”

“Right, right, there are a lot of castles.”

“Mhm.”

“Lot of haunted castles.”

“Right.”

They lay in silence, Lancelot staring at the canopy above him and Gawain staring at Lancelot’s face. Both of them had a definite sense that there was a major point they were missing. Lancelot had a vague conception that it might have to do with the fact that he killed too many people. Gawain suspected it was that they had skipped dinner.

“Well,” said Gawain eventually, “nothing to be done about it now. Hey, do you think it’s also bad if we touch at all, or is it just kissing?”

“I mean… there’s nothing illicit about touching,” Lancelot reasoned. “You have to touch people all the time.”

“Great,” Gawain said, and took that as all the invitation he needed to drape himself over Lancelot’s chest, his face squashed up against the pillow. “I’m so tired.”

“Tomorrow…” Lancelot cut himself off, overcome with a yawn. “Tomorrow… we should… what are we doing here again?”

“Looking for the, the thing.”

“Hart?”

“No, no, the… sword.”

“Oh. Right. Cursed sword?”

“Cursed sword.”

Gawain groaned, his voice muffled by the pillow and Lancelot’s neck. “It’s always a cursed sword with these people.” 

_These people_ , in this case, were themselves, who had heard at a nearby village that there was a cursed sword and decided it would be funny to try and find it, since they already had so many. It had not proved quite as funny when they discovered that the castle in question was very haunted. It was beset by terrifying monstrous creatures and also a lot of less metaphorical monsters, which the metaphorical terrifying monstrous creatures were somewhat irritated by.

“We could leave,” Lancelot yawned, “in the morning. Depends if we really want the sword.”

“Of course we really want the sword. We’ve got to get the sword.”

“Why’ve we got to get the sword?”

Gawain made a scoffing noise. “Because we said we would. Come on, Lancelot. Keep up.”

“I’m tired…” He shifted under Gawain, heedless of elbowing him in the chest. “Want to sleep.”

“Ah, yeah. Sorry, let’s sleep.”

There was silence for several seconds which to Lancelot felt like several seconds and to Gawain felt like eternity. 

“Um,” said Gawain, “you don’t think there are any ghosts here, right?”

“Not at this temperature,” murmured Lancelot vaguely. “We didn’t bring it.”

“What?”

“Mhm.”

“Right.” Gawain glanced nervously into the darkened corners of the room, illuminated only by a flickering candle on the table. “Only, it seems like ghosts are going to show up.”

There was no response. Lancelot was, as often occurred, asleep. After waiting for a few minutes to see if this changed, Gawain squeezed his eyes shut, hoped for the best, and pretended he was asleep as well. 

Time stretched out in the way it did when you were trying so hard not to be awake that you were too distracted to fall asleep. Gawain lay very still, because every time he moved he was convinced that something in the room was moving as well. Every time he stopped stock still, determined to catch it in the act, and every time there was nothing there to hear.

Then, just as he was beginning to drift off into the ether of half-sleep, he became aware of a tugging sensation at his ankle. It took him a moment to register this as a problem. Then horror dripped down his spine, icy cold but not so strong that it overwhelmed logic. He didn’t move, barely breathed, focused on the tugging. It was travelling up his leg. Whatever it was couldn’t be seen at the angle at which his head was resting, but in Gawain’s mind there were three possibilities: 1) rodent, 2) large spider, or 3) disembodied hand come to life intent on strangling him in his sleep. 

Knowing his luck, it was almost certainly that last. Trying not to make any sudden movements, he reached his left hand over Lancelot’s prone form and slid it down until he reached one of the small pockets that always kept a knife when they were on the road. He had just palmed the hilt of it when Lancelot stirred blearily and said, “I think I fell asleep for a moment, what’s happening?”

There was a blur. It was grey-green and it launched itself from around Gawain’s knee straight to Lancelot’s throat. Lancelot, to his credit, looked more shocked than terrified, but he scrabbled at the mottled leathery hand with his own to no avail and made some choked sounds of attempted speech. 

“ _Shit_ ,” said Gawain, and flipped the knife around in his hand. “Let go.”

Lancelot did. As soon as his arms dropped, Gawain dove forward and jabbed the point of the knife into the dried flesh connecting the thumb to the rest of the hand. After a moment of brutal wrestling during which Lancelot stayed valiantly still, he managed to reach in and rip the thumb off, tossing it across the room. His face red with exertion and lack of air, Lancelot reached up, politely removed the remaining four fingers scrabbling aimlessly at his throat, and chucked them with their partner. 

When they had got their breath back and Lancelot could say words again, he rasped, “Rest of the skeletons?”

They spun to face the wall. The lump of fabric was looking suspiciously depleted. “I hate this!” said Gawain, his voice high enough to compensate for Lancelot’s hoarseness. “Under the bed?”

“With our swords, probably.”

Gawain cast a brief glance around the room, studiously not looking to the sides of the bed. “You go for the chair and I’ll deal with them for now.”

“On it.” In a flash, Lancelot launched himself off the front of the bed, landing several feet clear of the edge. Gawain was already moving, pushing himself up and flinging the top blanket forward behind Lancelot in an attempt to halt the two half-skeletons he could already see diving out from under. One of them managed to avoid it; the other took it full on the shoulders and clattered to the ground with a sad, musty noise. Gawain jumped down on top of it and stomped until he felt bone crack under his feet. 

Lancelot, meanwhile, had made it to the table and grabbed the single chair, spinning it around just in time to meet the rising stroke of a sword blow. There was a sound like a thirty year old wooden chair meeting meticulously layered steel, and then he ducked a second blow and thrust the remnants of the chair forward. The corpse stumbled back— straight into Gawain, who had no weapons and was not inclined to try to rip off any body parts, because that sort of thing was very unsavoury. Instead he pushed it away from him as hard as he could and ducked just in time for the whole table to sail over his head and smash into the corpse, carrying it backwards into the wall and burying it under a pile of wooden rubble. 

There was silence. “Not that I want to sound ungrateful,” said Gawain, into the pitch blackness, “but did you happen to grab the candle off the table before you threw it?” 

“Hmm,” said Lancelot. “No.”

“I thought not. Can you see in the dark, by any chance?”

Shuffling noises. “I don’t think so...” said Lancelot.

The dark was beginning to feel very immediate. “You don’t think so?” 

“Unless I suddenly develop the ability in the next couple of seconds. Ah, here’s the door. Ready?”

“No,” said Gawain miserably, and then there was the scraping sound of a chair being removed and light forced its way into the narrow room. Before anything else could squeeze through the door, Lancelot slid a knife out from another well-hidden pocket and brandished it through the gap. “Don’t see anything. Let’s just make a break for it.”

They did, slamming the door shut behind them and then standing back to back to cover both ends of the hallway. There was nothing sinister visible to either of them, which was in itself sinister, because there had certainly been sinister things visible when they had retired for the evening. Sconces lit the hall in a pale, ghostly flame, which was ominous but a lot better than regular old darkness. Gawain felt about his person for anything useful and turned up nothing but the knife he had taken from Lancelot earlier and a flask containing a substance not known to induce competence. His small satchel had been left in the room. “Uhm,” he said, “so, I figure we should skip out on sleep and just head for the cursed sword.”

“I’m thinking anteroom,” said Lancelot. He took a step forward and peered down the hallway. “Hey, are those footprints?”

They were. “They’re— bloody,” said Gawain miserably, clutching at Lancelot’s arm. “Oh, no. Why did we do this, Lancelot?”

“Cursed hart.”

“Cursed sword, I thought.”

“Yes.” Lancelot started forward, his steps inaudible and his gaze intent on the outlines of bloody footprints on the floor. “They don’t leave from the door,” he said softly, and gestured back down the hallway. “They come all along here and don’t even swerve by the room we were sleeping in. Wide gait. Walking slowly, almost aimlessly.”

“That’s nice,” said Gawain, who in other circumstances would be having a different reaction. “So, we should go the other way, right?”

But Lancelot was not listening to him, too focused on stalking towards the fork in the hallway some distance ahead where the footprints turned to the left. “Probably some kind of a guardian of the castle. Too unhurried to be under threat from anything else here.” He stopped. “We follow these, I think we’ll find the hart.”

“Sword.”

“Right. I love swords.”

“Don’t love harts!” said Gawain. There was something very odd in the air and he didn’t like it. It twisted into his brain and circled the thought that he had been here before and didn’t remember it, a concept that he didn’t want to think about. He always remembered things. He remembered things so well sometimes he had different memories of the same thing. That was how time worked when you were the best knight in the realm— or the second-best, or at any rate the most successful.

The footprints turned left at the fork and the two of them followed, Lancelot taking the point and Gawain keeping a watchful eye the way they had come. Nothing stirred. They reached the end of the hallway without any perturbations in the footprints’ path, went down a small flight of stairs, and emerged in another corridor, this one wider, structured like a barracks. 

“Oh!” said Lancelot, whose eyes had adjusted to the dim light better. “That’s interesting.”

Gawain squinted into the shadows on either side of the hall. “More dead bodies? Not again.”

“You think they’ll come to life too?”

For all Lancelot was— well, _Lancelot_ — he could spend the rest of his life on quests of errantry and never errant as much as Gawain had erranted. Nothing was truly terrifying when you knew the patterns, could see the shape of the story, and a suspicion of what the story was here was beginning to dawn on Gawain. He shook his head. “We’ve already been attacked and survived. This will be different.”

Hesitantly, they padded forward down the hall, passing slumped bodies on either side. At first nothing seemed to be happening. Then Lancelot’s breath caught, and very quietly, he said, “Don’t look, but I think we’re being watched by ghosts.”

Gawain immediately turned to look. He _hated_ ghosts. He hated the concept of them, hated the measly little way they stuck around even after you had dealt with them, and hated the thought that _he_ might be a ghost one day, watching and waiting and saying nothing of use or doing anything beyond haunt. 

There was not the throng he had expected from the number of dead bodies; rather, perhaps half the number. Each was standing next to one of the corpses they had passed— plaintive and almost innocent-looking. No armour, just simple clothes and expressions of childish injury. Gawain shivered, and turned back to face front. 

Now as they walked he could see spirits rising from the corner of his eye, curdling up from fallen bodies like wisps of fog. Some of them were young, some were middle-aged, but no children or old men— clearly guards, fighters of some sort. Lancelot was less troubled, but reached out his hand nonetheless, just a brush of fingers against Gawain’s wrist that Gawain took as a lifeline. A horrid little idea had begun to worm around in his mind. “Do you see the man with the bald head?”

“Hmm?” Lancelot turned, gave the hall behind them a quick look, and shook his head. “Why?”

Something turned in Gawain’s chest. “I think I’m seeing people I killed,” he said, his voice far-off. 

Lancelot’s hand twitched in his. “Oh. Great. Uhm— oh, dear.”

“Nothing for it but to get out of here.”

“We should— apologize?”

“They’re _dead,_ ” said Gawain prosaically. “Dead people don’t care they’re dead.”

Sometimes Lancelot knew him too well for his own good. “You don’t know that. You’re just saying that to make yourself feel better.”

“And?” Gawain said, his voice rising. “It’s not working great, thanks for asking!”

Lancelot stopped in his tracks, spun around like a top on a table, and waved awkwardly. “Hello, everyone,” he said. “Uhm. Sorry about— this mess.”

Whatever Lancelot’s ghosts were saying, Gawain couldn’t see, but his own just stood, swaying back and forth with their eyes wide and their dead mouths slightly open. “Lancelot,” he hissed, “this is the _worst_ time for you to be _kind_ —”

“So, uhm, I think we probably killed you lot,” Lancelot continued. “Really sorry about that, it— it wasn’t personal.”

Still no response from the ghosts. Something would have to be done. It was a sad kind of story, Gawain thought, but one where he could guess the grammar. He clapped his hands. “I repent before God and will never kill wantonly again or take delight in bloodshed and I have learned my lesson and you may all go to your peace. Amen.”

They stared at him for a second, drifting back and forth. Then a great sigh went up and, one by one, they evaporated into fog and rose up to the ceiling. Gawain breathed out a sigh of relief. “Right. Lancelot, your turn.”

“What?”

“Just—” He waved a hand. “Say you’ve seen the error of your ways and you’ll be a better person and whatnot. That’s all they want.”

Lancelot’s eyebrows were drawn together, his dark brown eyes shadowed and hard to see. Faintly, he whet his lips. “I— I can’t just— I feel awful, but it won’t be true. You know it won’t be true.”

“You think it’s true for me?”

“No, but you’re—” He stopped, but the trajectory of his words was easy enough to guess. 

“I’m what?” said Gawain hollowly. “A liar? Is that what you were going to say?”

“I— that’s not what I meant.”

Except it was, and they both knew it. “What did you mean, then?”

“That you— I— we—” Lancelot stuttered off into silence, casting a dark look at Gawain. Then he spoke, his voice quiet in that tone that meant he regretted what he was saying even as he said it. “It’s not my fault I didn’t have to cheat my way to the top.”

A small triumphant part of Gawain crowed, _see, that’s the truth of it, that’s what he’s always thought of you._ He ignored it for the time being because it didn’t solve the ghost issue, and he was nothing if not good at repressing his emotions. Instead he waved at the hallway and said, his voice full of derision, “And this is where you draw the line, is it? Knowing the rules of the game? Playing to win? You’re acting very high and mighty for a ruthless unrepentant killer.”

Throwing restraint to the winds, Lancelot gave him a sulky glare that hurt more than any number of epithets or insults from anyone else would have. “And you’re mad I won’t get down on your level to make you feel better about yourself. Gawain, if you don’t— if you can’t— I won’t let you bully me into being worse than I already am.”

“Worse? I suppose _I’m_ what’s worse, yes?” Without waiting for an answer, he spun away from where Lancelot’s ghosts were presumably still watching and barged down the rest of the hall towards the door at the end, calling out over his shoulder. “Good to know. You can figure out what to do with your new friends. Come along or don’t, I don’t care. I’ll cheat my own way to the stupid cursed sword without your incredible honesty and _sheer raw talent_ , Lancelot du Lac.”

Sunrise crept through the windows earlier than it should have, and Gawain was alone. He had spent the last two or so hours wandering through abandoned corridors— as soon as possible he had parted ways from the bloody footprints and decided to trust in luck rather than Lancelot’s tracking skills. He felt tense and shivery, like he was coming off of the high of a fever and no one had lit the fire. But the thrill of competition was humming through his veins.

He hadn’t met anything unusual since he had parted ways with Lancelot. It was not hard to guess why— after all, this was precisely why he had swerved away from the footprint trail. It was the sort of trick that wouldn’t have worked if he was on his own, but he was certain the denizens of the castle were occupied with a bigger, better, taller hero at the present time, and would spare little thought for a lying cheat sneaking around the edges. 

_Didn’t have to cheat my way to the top._ The words bounced around his brain as he circled the periphery of the entrance floor and descended down a stairwell to a subterranean level decorated with far more aging tapestries than was usual for a basement. It was rich of Lancelot to say, Lancelot who had been raised in paradise by a sorceress who had left him with more than one preternatural gift. Easy enough to think of being raised to inherit as _cheating_ , if you conveniently forgot that the foremost thing he had been raised to inherit was war. What cheating meant was lying to your father to save your brother, lying to your uncle to save yourself, lying to everyone who tried to take you down a peg. 

Lancelot didn’t understand. Lancelot hadn’t been there at the start, when Camelot was half-formed, just Arthur in the shadow of his father and Gawain in the shadow of everything. You had to win, didn’t you? There was nothing noble in victory, and so there was nothing ignoble in whatever method of victory you grasped at. And Gawain knew the rules of the game, had always figured out the rules before anyone else, because if you couldn’t win on talent you could win on a technicality. 

(Not, he brooded to himself as he heard demonic screeching from somewhere on the floor above him, that he was nothing but a shell of a knight. He fought most things on strength alone. Lancelot was just annoyed Gawain was so good at squirming out of repercussions.)

Gawain wasn’t so deluded as to think he was a _good_ person, per se, but he took umbrage at the suggestion Lancelot was any better. Being good wasn’t the point. The point was grabbing whatever happiness you could from life and pulling until it was yours, because if you didn’t then you lost, and if you lost you were nothing. 

He turned a corner and blinked at the sudden brightly-lit expanse before him. Underground, there should have been no way for sky-lights to shine down on the anteroom, ornamented with stained glass, but shine down they did, casting parts of the floor with a bright morning glow. It looked like it had been a chapel, once, but as death had seeped into the castle it had gotten stranger and stranger. Gawain caught his breath. 

And in the end, he reflected as he padded forward softly down the main aisle to a raised dais in the center of the room, all his petty justifications for anger were a nice distraction from the bigger worry, the spectre that hung over every sideways look from Lancelot into which he read too much— that when push came to shove he was _second choice_ , not good enough to be properly loved, only pitied. Not earnest, not altruistic, not even talented at anything but faking, and also not very tall at all; in other words, not _Galehaut._

Because Galehaut, when you came down to it, had died for love, and Gawain wouldn’t ever die for love. Probably wouldn’t die at all, he thought, but with more bitter hatred than the sentiment warranted. Nothing he did would ever be good enough, because he was alive, and Galehaut was dead, and there was something selfless about death in Gawain’s mind. 

The sword sat on a slender ebony table, shimmering and perfect. It looked like every magic sword he had ever seen. Behind it sat an empty chair, and along the table, etched into the wood, were three words: _for killing monsters._ Suddenly cheered, Gawain grinned. Well, let Lancelot take the honest way— knowing how to play the game had gotten him here first. He dusted off his hands and then grasped the ornate silver hilt of the sword. 

As soon as he did, a figure flickered into existence behind the table. He was tall, imposing, with an old braided grey beard and fine brocade robes that were nonetheless quite out of date. “Sir Gawain,” he proclaimed in a querulous voice, pushing himself to standing. Gawain did not ask how he knew his name. They always did. “You have claimed the Silver-Ringed Sword, which is so enchanted as to lead its bearer to slay the most dangerous monster he might encounter. I am the enchanter Gastruon of Sanserin, and I now pose to you a game—”

“Accepted,” said Gawain, and before the enchanter could say anything else he swung the sword around in a close arc and severed his head from his shoulders. The head, adorned with a brief expression of surprise, flew off, tumbling onto the table. Gawain seized it, cast it onto the floor, and stamped on it once with a satisfying cracking noise. Then he rocketed around the table and brought the sword down again, splitting the remainder of Gastruon of Sanserin in two vertical halves and kicking the left away from the right to make very sure no posthumous rejoining would occur. Satisfied, he leant back against the table and took a good look at his new sword. 

It looked normal, but cursed swords often did. A well-made hilt, worked steel, gemstones on the pommel— not bad, and particularly not bad if you were in the business of killing monsters with maximum efficacy, as Gastruon had promised this sword would do. 

He stilled. Very slowly, so slowly it was hardly even visible, the tip of the sword was swivelling back behind him to the entrance. There was something behind him. If he listened very closely, he could hear it approaching. Not human, it was too quiet for that; no human moved that quietly except— he spun against his will, sword dragging him around—

—Lancelot. Steel met steel and neither gave out. The sword, which had quicker reflexes than Gawain did, yanked itself up and around in a side blow which was fortunately parried. For a second Gawain saw something injured on Lancelot’s face, and then his expression cleared to surly understanding. 

“Is this magic or something?” he said, scooting backwards out of range of Gawain rather than engaging him in swordplay. “You’re not trying to kill me, I would hope.”

Gawain, still supremely disgruntled and hanging onto the hilt of the sword for dear life, did not deign to respond to this last. “It’s supposed to kill the worst monster in the room, or something like that.” The words sank in, and he snorted out a breath of laughter. “I hope you’re flattered.”

“Not very,” said Lancelot, but there was a touch of wry humour in his voice. “Thanks for not killing me.”

“Anytime,” grunted Gawain. He tried to think. Prior to picking it up, the sword had not been doing anything, and Gastruon had said it would lead its bearer, not lead itself. An idea occurred to him. “I’m going to let go of it.”

Lancelot gaped at him. “I would really rather you didn’t, considering you’re the only thing keeping it from hacking me to pieces.”

“No, no, this will be fine,” said Gawain. “It’s not a good story if the sword kills on its own. The bearer is the one who’s supposed to be the hero.”

“Oh, Jesus in Heaven—”

“Look, do you trust me?”

There was no hesitation. “Yes.”

Gawain let go of the hilt. For a moment the sword hung in the air as though suspended by string. He held his breath. Then it clattered to the floor, no more alive than any other sword. 

“Well,” said Lancelot, after a moment, “I suppose that’s alright, then.”

A little more praise for his ingenuity would have been appreciated, especially in the wake of their argument. Gawain crossed his arms and lifted his chin up. “No gratitude? No _thank you, Gawain, for your wonderful cheating that saved my life_?”

Lancelot’s mouth worked worlessly for a second. But when he finally spoke, it wasn’t the insults Gawain had been expecting. “No— I— thank you. Uhm. Do I pick it up now?”

“It might try to kill you again. I don’t know how these things work.”

“I’ll drop it if it does!” promised Lancelot earnestly. He bent down and, placing the cross guard of his own sword against that of the cursed one, grabbed the hilt. 

The thing about placing your sword to prevent your other sword from attacking you is that you have not placed it in such a way as to prevent it from attacking another person, particularly someone standing right in front of you. Gawain swore, ducked the blow with narrow and undignified success, and then stumbled backwards as Lancelot managed to yank the sword back towards him. “Really?” he said, offended. “Me too? I don’t think—”

“Well, clearly it does!” Lancelot snapped, and dropped the offending blade. “I hope you feel very proud of your status in the eyes of God!”

“I don’t, actually, but you’re a liar when you say _you_ don’t!”

For a moment they stared at each other breathlessly. Then Lancelot flushed, crossed his arms as well, and said, “Right, well.”

“Yes?” said Gawain, who felt as though he was about to get cursed out or apologized to. 

Lancelot tossed his head like an upset horse. “You _did_ call me a ruthless unrepentant killer.”

This wasn’t an apology, not in the slightest, but it seemed like it was paving the way to an apology, if in a roundabout way. The problem was that they had both said things that were true, and it was hard to pretend they weren’t. Gawain took a deep breath and tried for mediation. “And?” he said, as gently as he could. 

“I— well— you said it like you cared.”

Distantly, Gawain recognized that he really _should_ care, and that he didn’t, and that was a worse sin than being a bit of a liar. The truth of it was that a man who killed because he had always killed was no better than a man who killed because he liked it; Lancelot had not quite realised this, and instead twisted his guilt into a perverse kind of pride. If Gawain had been as good with words as everyone thought he was, he would have known how to say this. Instead, in a meek sort of voice, he said, “I’m sorry I made fun of you for not apologizing to ghosts.”

“I’m— I— thank you.” Lancelot cast a bashful glance down at his hands and to the sword he had brought with him. It was not his, Gawain realised, and must have been taken from a dead guard at some point. “I… don’t like lying. You know I don’t like lying.”

“It seems— a bit harsh of you to judge me for it, though.” He put his finger on the broader issue, the issue so large that it was hard to see from the inside. “I know I’m a cheat. But we’re both playing a broken game, right? No honour among thieves.”

Lancelot let out a burst of laughter. “That’s a lot of metaphors. You don’t— I mean— there’s _something_ worthy in chivalry, isn’t there?”

The question stopped Gawain in his tracks. It was not something he had ever asked himself before, ever pondered at all, because life was too hard to worry about what was worthy or just. You did what you had always done and hoped the world wouldn’t change around you, because if life upheaved itself you might not wind up on top the second time around. He tried to be good, to help scared people and make hurt ones happy, but that was simply a side benefit to chivalry’s main purpose, which was to keep Gawain of Orkney— what, safe? Happy?

_In control_ , said a voice he didn’t like very much at all. “I don’t know,” he said. His voice felt hoarse all of a sudden. “There might be next week. Only thing to do is stick around and find out.”

Lancelot stared at him, his eyes wide. “Right,” he said softly. “Well, I can— I’ll do that, then. I… I’m sorry I— that is— you only cheat when Camelot’s involved, you know.”

“What?” 

“Something about— other people.” Lancelot waved a hand and stepped carefully over the sword to lean against the table next to Gawain. The sun streaming in from one of the impossible skylights crested his hair, casting his face in a warm glow. “And watching eyes. I don’t know. I’m sorry for— saying what I knew would hurt.”

The sunlight was so warm and so was Lancelot’s gaze, and Gawain knew, suddenly, that nothing he could say in his defense needed to be said. Between them was jealousy and pride and, coated over all of it, guilt so thick it turned the one to the other. He let his head fall to the side onto Lancelot’s shoulder and ran his fingertips over scarred knuckles. “Let’s not worry about who’s worse,” he whispered. “I think the answer’s always going to be ‘yes.’ And there’s no fun in thinking too hard about that.”

“That’s true,” said Lancelot, who sounded a bit like he was stuck between tears and laughter, “but I do think I was a bit of a bastard.”

Gawain closed his eyes for a moment and leaned into him. “A bit,” he said, “but I’m a bit of a bastard myself. Mutual forgiveness, hm? And a promise not to repeat it. I do— you may have noticed I quite like you.”

“I wouldn’t trade you for the world,” Lancelot said, and if he noticed the way Gawain stilled against him for a moment, caught on the hook of words he had worried desperately would not be true enough for Lancelot to say, he was very kind and didn’t remark on it. 

In the end, they solved the sword issue by tying it to a piece of string and dragging it along behind them. It was not very dignified, but it was quite funny, and that just about made up for it. The various haunted bits of castle (“There was a devil,” Lancelot said, “but it’s gone now”) had retired themselves after the events of the night and the subsequent raiding of the cursed sword, so the two of them retrieved their belongings from the room where they had attempted to sleep and made a grateful exit. 

As the sun stretched itself higher into the sky, they rode into the town from which they had departed, sword scraping along on the ground behind them. Bells rang and villagers clustered at the sides of the road. Gawain, in his element and determined not to feel bashful about it, waved at them jubilantly. 

“So, uhm—” They had been ushered into a celebratory luncheon with the local count’s son, who appeared to carry out most of the business for his father. The sword was still dangling ignominiously from its string, and no one had touched it because Lancelot had said some things that were very effective threats, if not effective at making him well-liked. Now he rubbed anxiously at the back of his neck. “The thing with this sword is— uh— you should not touch it, really.”

The count’s son— his name was Delric, if Gawain remembered correctly from when his charming wife had breezed over introductions the day before— stared. “Ever? Isn’t it a magic sword?”

“Yes,” said Lancelot, “it’s a very powerful magic sword, and it kills monsters—”

“There’s a prophecy,” cut in Gawain. “We faced an evil sorceress from the Distant Isles and she said the sword should only be grasped when this town is under siege from the greatest evil it has ever faced.”

“When’s that?” squeaked Delric. 

Gawain was too tired to think of anything interesting. “You’ll know when the time comes,” he said, ignoring Lancelot’s eyes narrowing in mirth. “Until then just drag it around with the string.”

“You could put it in a really secure box,” Lancelot offered helpfully. 

“A box would be good,” said Gawain. “Anyway, if you’re not going to eat that—”

Later, they sat by the windowsill in the room they had been given to share for the night, with many apologies from their embarrassed hosts about the lack of luxury. It was a small town, somewhere on the map, somewhere they had no recollection of visiting before and yet must have. 

“Gawain, I’ve been thinking about time,” said Lancelot, eventually. His eyes were heavily lidded from lack of sleep and a touch too much wine. “I really don’t remember when we went to that castle before. It must have been a while ago, if it got haunted in the meantime. I don’t think you get instant ghosts, right?”

Gawain stirred against his side. The thought felt slippery and grotesque in his mind, and he didn’t want to concentrate on it. “Don’t know about ghosts. But I don’t want to— think too hard about the cracks, yes?”

“Hmm?”

He took a deep breath. It was the sort of thing he would only talk about because it was Lancelot, who deserved whatever words he could give. “You said other people make me— different, somehow. I think it’s just Camelot. That makes me the worst of myself, I mean. I don’t know, there’s something not right with Camelot, but I don’t want to worry too much about it because it’s alright now, isn’t it?”

“More than alright,” said Lancelot, which meant that he was letting the subject drop, and also that he was lying a little bit because Lancelot was never doing much better than alright _._ “You’re here, hmm?”

Touched by this platitude more deeply than he could express, Gawain reached across him and grabbed a grape from the platter on the table next to them. “Aw. I’m too tired to think up anything more eloquent than that, but— God— look, I don’t think life would be very enjoyable if you hadn’t shown up.” Then, because this left him feeling painfully naked, he gestured out the window. “The stars are really clear tonight.”

Lancelot looked dutifully and nodded. There was not much fog, but the sky was painted with the same stars it was every night. The Greeks had charted how the skies changed from year to year, Gawain reflected, resting his head back against the cold stone of the wall, but he couldn’t remember them ever looking any different. Beautiful, though— cold and distant and intangible. He shivered and turned back to Lancelot. “Well, don’t worry about the stars. I take the stars back, they’re upsetting me, actually.”

“Mhm?” A rare smile was creeping across Lancelot’s face. 

Gawain nodded, warming to the bit. “If we’re evaluating shiny things in the sky, they really don’t— pardon the pun— hold a candle to the sun, and even the moon is— no, stop laughing, I’m dead serious—” 

But he himself was giggling, his words trailing into humour, and then Lancelot was kissing him and kissing him and the stationary stars wouldn’t hurt them anytime soon. 


End file.
